...The Weekly Standard's Fred Barnes reports that McConnell "burst into laughter" Thursday when presented with the framework for a deal.

In a statement, White House spokeswoman Amy Brundage said, "Right now, the only thing preventing us from reaching a deal that averts the fiscal cliff and avoids a tax hike on 98 percent of Americans is the refusal of congressional Republicans to ask the very wealthiest individuals to pay higher tax rates..."

A note from the Elections Have Consequences Department: McConnel might experience a humor cliff moment when he is unemployed.

...But the disingenuousness does not stop there, no sir. Let's assume that the worst-case scenario they have been desperately trying to smear Rice with were true: this was a political cover-up to let the re-election campaign succeed in putting Barack Obama back into the White House and that Susan Rice was complicit in this.

These are the same asshats who confirmed, nay lauded, the murdering of 3,000 Americans on American soil by confirming Condoleeza Rice as Secretary of State, despite the fact that the administration for which she was National Security Director (right there, terrorism falls in her domain) botched the intel at the very least and possibly deliberately ignored it in order to pick a fight with Iraq in a time when the administration was falling apart under its own weight.

So really, gang, pack up your tents and shut up about the long walk home.

Wednesday, November 28, 2012

...“If you fight science, you’re going to lose your children, and I believe in telling it the way it was.

Excuse me for a second while I pick my jaw off the ground. Maybe because I never traveled in evangelical circles, I had honestly never heard the whole "the Earth is 6,000 years old and Jesus rode on dinosaurs" notion until about 20 years ago, and then suddenly I heard it everywhere. It was difficult to understand how so many people could deny the vast array of evidence in front of them like a badge of honor. The whole Creation Museum outside Louisville, Kentucky, was promoted by Robertson's CBN network when it opened was predicated on this very notion.

It's an amazing thing to hear Pat Robertson actually advising a follower to not fight science.

...As for Ricks going after MSNBC, with the domination of Fox News channel it’s absurd to say MSNBC wasn’t smart to offer the Obama network as some sort of balance to the right wing lunacy. It was good for MSNBC in the short-term, though looking long it’s going to bring challenges.

The inevitable result is people finally seeing what our national media has become, especially on cable. A partisan farce where facts go to die and debate is straggled, with the viewing audience culled to partisans of one side or the other as people don’t so much look for news as their own opinion validated, with the same guests seen over and over again.

Washington • Former Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman is signing on with a new movement to attempt to bridge the partisan divide that has left Washington in gridlock, charging that government leaders should be more focused on problem-solving, not point-scoring.

"Too many people in Washington believe that leading consists of imposing their will on the opposition. It is true of both parties," Huntsman, a Republican, said during a conference call organized by the group No Labels. "This all or nothing leadership is an attitude that may work on military battlefields or in competitive business markets ... but it’s a recipe for dysfunction in democratic politics..."

Tuesday, November 27, 2012

...In many ways, my failure to bring "the good, decent conservatives" of this District to my side is completely unsurprising. People do not readily break their habits, nor switch their loyalties, nor admit error. And in my eight years of studying this problem, I've yet to see any approach that has succeeded in moving people from alignment with this destructive and dishonest force.

But I did have some hopes that my approach might work. I'd never seen tried what I had in mind: telling forcefully and credibly a truth framed in terms of moral righteousness. "The battle in American politics today is not between liberal and conservative. It's between constructive and destructive. Honest vs. dishonest..."

So I declared, and I meant it.AndySchmooklerforCongress :: The Way Forward: The Uncracked Nut...

...For the record, no one has been more correct in his analysis and prescriptions for the economy’s problems than Paul Krugman. The blind hatred for him on the right simply pushed me further away from my old allies and comrades.

The final line for me to cross in complete alienation from the right was my recognition that Obama is not a leftist. In fact, he’s barely a liberal—and only because the political spectrum has moved so far to the right that moderate Republicans from the past are now considered hardcore leftists by right-wing standards today. Viewed in historical context, I see Obama as actually being on the center-right...

...Even more potentially threatening are the votes in Washington and Colorado to legalize marijuana. Obama has been a relentless foe of any challenge to harsh federal drug laws, authorizing scores of Justice Department raids on medical-marijuana dispensaries in states that have approved them. But the voters in Washington and Colorado (and their governors, who’ve pledged their support for the laws) are basically his own supporters.

So is California Gov. Jerry Brown, who — anticipating a similar vote soon in his state — last week said Obama and his Justice Department minions must “recognize the sovereignty of the states” and stop trying to “nullify a reasonable state regulation.” A speech on nullification from a governor of California in 2012! The past isn’t dead, it doesn’t even need Viagra.

A couple of weeks ago, Papa John's Pizza CEO John Schnatter made headlines when he said that he would have to cut back hours and/or raise prices on his products in order to pay for Obamacare. The price rise threat never made much sense: New health care regulations will cost the company (says Schnatter) between five and eight million bucks per year, which he can cover with a price rise of four cents per pie. Besides, I was always under the impression that, under capitalism, prices are determined by competition.

Well, I've been doing some research. Turns out that Papa Johns operates in a place called Canada, where Big Obtrusive Nanny State Gummint offers -- get this -- full, socialized health coverage. And yet the restaurants seem to be doing well!...

U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Susan Rice on Tuesday failed to win over her harshest Republican critics in the U.S. Senate who are threatening to block her nomination if President Barack Obama chooses her for Secretary of State or another top post in his second-term Cabinet

As a straight white dude living a fairly middle-class existence, who is fortunate to have no firsthand experience with rape, it’s been pretty easy for me to live my life without giving it much thought. I spend almost no energy thinking about the safest route to take when walking home, or what might happen to my drink if I step away from it, or who I should or shouldn’t accept a ride home with...

Sunday, November 25, 2012

Has there ever been a less gracious presidential loser than Mitt Romney? I was willing to give him the benefit of the doubt during the campaign. I figured he was just dialing for dollars when he massaged the Boca Raton fat cats' fantasies about the lack of "responsibility" on the part of the 47% who don't pay income taxes. But it turns out he really believes that stuff...

I don't know what would possess someone to go out and spend 16 hours knocking on doors in Connecticut for senate candidate Linda McMahon. Anyone who could read a poll knew that she was going to lose. But, since she was offering to pay people for their time, I guess work is work, right? The problem is that all those workers had their last checks bounce. Then some of them went to a local television station and complained, which led to a story that was broadcast in the Nutmeg State. This irritated the McMahon campaign. Check out what happened next:...

I don't know what would possess someone to go out and spend 16 hours knocking on doors in Connecticut for senate candidate Linda McMahon. Anyone who could read a poll knew that she was going to lose. But, since she was offering to pay people for their time, I guess work is work, right? The problem is that all those workers had their last checks bounce. Then some of them went to a local television station and complained, which led to a story that was broadcast in the Nutmeg State. This irritated the McMahon campaign. Check out what happened next:...

Friday, November 23, 2012

In two weeks, adults in this state will no longer be arrested or incarcerated for something that nearly 30 million Americans did last year. For the first time since prohibition began 75 years ago, recreational marijuana use will be legal; the misery-inducing crusade to lock up thousands of ordinary people has at last been seen, by a majority of voters in this state and in Colorado, for what it is: a monumental failure...

“...When you’re in a hole, stop digging. He keeps digging,” Lindsay Graham said of Romney, on “Meet the Press.” “We’re in a death spiral with Hispanic voters because of rhetoric around immigration. And candidate Romney, in the primary, dug the hole deeper.” He wasn’t a lone figure with a shovel; there was a whole big-donor-powered earth-mover working with him. But that, now, is the G.O.P.’s problem, not his. While Graham and others are working on their death spiral, Romney seems happily fascinated by the twirling of Luigi’s Magic Tires. And it’s better that he is.

...Israeli press reports indicate that the Iron Dome installation in Kiryat Malachi suffered a communications problem. There have also been reports of shrapnel damage on the ground from the remains of Israeli interceptor missiles.

U.S. taxpayers have paid much of the reported $500-million price tag — to date — of Iron Dome, which Israel began developing five years ago. The U.S. ambassador here, Dan Shapiro, appeared with the Israeli defense minister in the ceremony installing the latest battery.

U.S. funding is also expected to underwrite Israeli's next-generation antimissile shield, known as David's Sling, aimed at longer-range missiles, fired from as far away as Iran. Rafael Advanced Defense Systems, the Israeli firm that developed Iron Dome, is also working on David's Sling, along with Raytheon, the U.S. defense giant. Rafael would like to market Iron Dome globally...

Tuesday, November 20, 2012

...A recent Gallup poll showed that most Americans have soured on the Tea Party label. Just 28 percent of Americans hold favorable views of the tea party, an all-time low in the 19 months that CNN/ORC pollsters have gauged feelings about the movement. At the same time, 53 percent of Americans think poorly of the tea party, an all-time high. According to CNN/ORC, the movement's popularity peaked in the spring of 2010, when 38 percent of Americans said they liked the tea party and only 36 percent said they didn't...

Dean Chambers, the conservative blogger who vaulted from obscurity to fame in the last few weeks of the presidential election by “unskewing” polls he found to favorable to President Obama, has a new Web site claiming that Democrats stole the election...

A former hedge fund portfolio manager was arrested Tuesday on charges that he helped deliver what a prosecutor said "what might be the most lucrative inside tip of all time," enabling investment advisers and their hedge funds to make more than $276 million in illegal profits...

...The complaint of Sens. John McCain (R-Ariz.) and Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) against U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice seems to boil down to this: There is no such thing as the legendary “fog of war,” so those who would offer tentative evaluations of catastrophic events should be omniscient and infallible...

...But the worst lie was the central point of the Republican campaign narrative: That Mitt Romney was qualified to run the country because he was a successful businessman who created Bain Capital and thus could create American jobs. As the presidential campaign was in the final stretch, in October and earlier this month, Bain Capital — which Romney founded and is still invested in — was, and is still, in the process of doing what it has always done, shutting down a profitable manufacturer. Bain is closing Sensata Technologies, a manufacturer of automotive and aviation sensors in Freeport, Ill., and shipping all 170 American jobs, and the facility’s machinery, to China.

The Republicans need look no further than their own big lies for their resounding defeat. The American electorate doesn’t like to have its collective intelligence insulted so glibly.

Sunday, November 18, 2012

A gun store owner in Pinetop, Arizona wants you to know that if you’re one of the 736 people in that town who voted for Barack Obama, you’re no longer welcome in his store. According to the Phoenix News-Times, Cope Reynolds, the owner of the Southwest Shooting Authority store, posted a sign and took out a newspaper ad announcing that Obama voters are personae non gratae at his business “effective immediately...”

...“It’s one of the most unfair attacks I’ve ever seen in Washington in 34 years,” Levin said on ABC’s This Week. “Susan Rice was using the unclassified talking points, which were provided by the intelligence community.”

At a congressional hearing on Friday, former CIA director David Petraeus said Rice received an intelligence memo that described the attack in Benghazi as something that evolved from a “spontaneously inspired” protest...

Back in the Stone Age, I was the faculty advisor to a student newspaper. When the students wouldn't back down from administrative demands to control, approve, and censor content, the nobles of this little feudal empire took a different approach-- blackmailing the student government into defunding the student newspaper. The issue was never free speech-- it was power, and I suspect that is at the root of today's neanderthal campus. The Weekend Interview with Greg Lukianoff: How Free Speech Died on Campus - WSJ.com

...Mr. Jindal appeared on the program with another popular rising star in the party, Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, vice chairman of the RGA. The duo is helping to lead the effort to rebrand the GOP, which continues to lose ground among minority, young and female voters. Each of those groups went for President Obama in the election by wide margins.

While not explicitly saying so, Mr. Jindal implied that Mr. Romney reinforced the perception that the Republican party is the voice of corporate CEOs and of the wealthy, and did not seem surprised that most minority voters and women chose to cast ballots for the president...

Saturday, November 17, 2012

Chris Matthews thinks House Speaker John Boehner needs to be respected by Democrats and President Barack Obama. But Sen. Mitch McConnell does not deserve such respect.

"I don't think you need to respect McConnell," Matthews, the host of MSNBC's "Hardball," said at the Atlantic's Washington Ideas Forum on Thursday. "McConnell is a tree stump on the lawn you want to cut—you really just want to haul it out of there..."

Just over a week since the two-time Republican presidential hopeful failed to deny President Obama a second term, instead of offering up condolences for a candidate who garnered 48 percent of the popular vote, GOP leaders seem to be keeping Romney at arm's length...

Friday, November 16, 2012

The director of issues analysis of a conservative fundamentalist Christian organization on Thursday asserted that the terrorists who attacked the United States on Sept. 11, 2001 were actually “the agents of God’s wrath” because they prompted “God Bless America” to be sung at Major League Baseball games and that is “one of the reasons we haven’t been hit since 9/11...”

...Why, you ask? Because even at lowered rates, a $20 trillion economy that grows at 3 percent per year is bigger than a $15 trillion economy with yearly growth of 1 percent. A bigger pie yields either bigger pieces or more pieces—the choice is up to the ones who slice it...

In a quiet hotel room at the Watergate, Schrödinger's cat lay a-mouldering under an unmade bed, delivered in the dead of night by agents of Funk & Wagnell's in a hermetically sealed USPS Ships Anywhere flat rate box. Along with an apology note addressed to Johnny Carson, the box arrived at dead midnight on September 11, 2012. Along with the frazzled cat, the box contained Franklin Graham's Harley keys, a nose hair trimmer belonging to G. Gordon Liddy, and a 5¼ floppy disk with animated GIFs showing Susan Rice, David Petraeus, and an unidentified Arab sheik knocking back Mai-Tais in a hot tub in Aspen, Colorado. Discovered at dawn, a sharp-eyed member of the 47% soon saw an opportunity to become a 1%er and contacted a Fox News agent lurking under a nearby dumpster. With an hour, a husky voiced maid bearing falafels and the now pungent box arrived at the lush digs of Bill O'Reilly, where its odor was masked by a persistent swamp gas emission from within. Inside, she could hear the wisdom of a great Eastern seer emanating from O'Reilly's wall-sized state-of-the-art entertainment center. The rest, as they say, is history.

...This is not to suggest that the GOP has suddenly transformed itself, or that it’s on course to do so. A consensus in the party to dismiss the ’12 result as a product of Romney’s incompetence and not a broader indictment of the party’s dwindling demographic appeal may yet take hold. But in the run-up to the election, I suggested that a Romney defeat would be good for the system because it wouldn’t normalize the GOP’s conduct during Obama’s first term. The loud rebukes of Romney’s “gifts” comments are one of several post-election signs that the GOP may play a more constructive role in the next four years than it did in the last. There are now calls for comprehensive immigration reform where there weren’t before, and Kristol isn’t the only influential Republican changing his tune a bit on taxes...

...Look, there’s only one bottom line here. This is a Demand Depression. The economy is depressed because no one is buying — lack of demand. If it were a Supply Depression — a depression caused by a lack of a supply of goods — we’d be out of it already. We’ve handed money hand over fist to the “job creators,” and they’ve given us nada in the way of ramped-up production. If there were money to be made by producing, they’d be making it — in this country, the one actual Americans care about...

Republican U.S. Rep. Scott DesJarlais of Tennessee testified during divorce proceedings that he and his former wife made a "mutual" decision for her to have two abortions, according to divorce transcripts released Thursday...

President Obama is using a Cold War-era mind-control technique known as "Delphi" to coerce Americans into accepting his plan for a United Nations-run communist dictatorship in which suburbanites will be forcibly relocated to cities. That's according to a four-hour briefing delivered to Republican state senators at the Georgia state Capitol last month...

Wednesday, November 14, 2012

A Florida man who warned that he might harm himself if Barack Obama won the presidency was found dead two days after the election of an apparent self-inflicted drug overdose.
Henry Hamilton, 64, was discovered dead in his home on Nov. 8 alongside two empty bottles of prescription drugs and a living will on which he'd written "Do not revive! F--- Obama!"...

...Last week, that so-called reality collided with one huge fact -- that a younger, more ethnically diverse and liberal population is increasing in size. Resistance is futile, as they say in those science fiction movies, but as long as the conservative right live in a media cocoon and act like sightless bats, trying to find their way with high frequency shrieking that bounces off the walls and only they can hear, you've got trouble, my friends. Even Dick Morris, that unctuous pollster and paragon of propriety, had to admit that his prediction of a Romney landslide was wrong because, "This isn't your father's America..."

A week after losing the election to President Obama, Mitt Romney blamed his overwhelming electoral loss on what he said were big “gifts” that the president had bestowed on loyal Democratic constituencies, including young voters, African-Americans and Hispanics...

President Obama was visibly angry today after Sens. John McCain and Lindsey Graham pledged to block Susan Rice, a potential Secretary of State, over her role in explaining the aftermath of the Sept. 11th attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi.

...The secession furor on the White House site has been met with opponents who offer petitions of their own: “Strip the citizenship from everyone who signed a petition to secede and exile them" (1,796 signatures) and “Deport everyone that signed a petition to withdraw their state from the United States of America) (2,347 signatures)...

I'm really not in favor of making crazy people madder, but maybe they could use one of Mitt's ideas and self-deport.

...Historians accused the younger Graham of using his elderly father for his own political purposes. Conservative Christians also called the removal of the list of cults hypocritical. Many Christians don’t consider Mormons to be members of Christ’s church.

The week before the election, the NAACP and a group of black ministers criticized the advertising campaign. In an open letter to the younger Graham, they suggested that he has been seduced by money and power and has threatened his family’s legacy with his actions...

...But the real problem is the Republican Party, which would not be recognizable to its patron saint, Ronald Reagan. The party doesn't need a poll or a focus group. It needs a mirror.

The truth is, Romney was better than the GOP deserved. Party nitwits undermined him and the self-righteous tried to bring him down. The nitwits are well-enough known at this point - those farthest-right social conservatives who couldn't find it in their hearts to keep their traps shut. No abortion for rape or incest? Sit down. Legitimate rape? Put on your clown suit and go play in the street...

With both parties positioning for difficult negotiations to avert a fiscal crisis as Congress returns for its lame-duck session, Democrats are latching on to an idea floated by Mitt Romney to raise taxes on the rich through a hard cap on income tax deductions...

Monday, November 12, 2012

...Compare the United States of 2012 to the United States of 1962. Leave aside the obvious points about segregation and discrimination, and look only at the economy.

In 1962, the government regulated the price and route of every airplane, every freight train, every truck and every merchant ship in the United States. The government regulated the price of natural gas. It regulated the interest on every checking account and the commission on every purchase or sale of stock. Owning a gold bar was a serious crime that could be prosecuted under the Trading with the Enemy Act. The top rate of income tax was 91%.

It was illegal to own a telephone. Phones had to be rented from the giant government-regulated monopoly that controlled all telecommunications in the United States. All young men were subject to the military draft and could escape only if they entered a government-approved graduate course of study. The great concern of students of American society -- of liberals such as David Riesman, of conservatives such as Russell Kirk, and of radicals such as Dwight Macdonald -- was the country's stultifying, crushing conformity.

Even if you look only at the experiences of white heterosexual men, the United States of 2012 is a freer country in almost every way than the United States of 1962....

Oh yeah, in the "over-regulated" world of 1962, one income could support a family of four. So is the middle class better off with less regulation?

...Asked on "Today" about what he wrote, Gingrich said, "The great thing about elections is they belong to the American people." He added, "I was wrong last week, as was virtually every major Republican analyst. And so, you have to stop and say to yourself, if I was that far off, what do I need to learn to better understand America?"

The U.S. will become the world’s top producer of oil within five years, a net exporter of the fuel around 2030 and nearly self-sufficient in energy by 2035, according to a new report from the International Energy Agency.

It’s a bold set of predictions for a nation that currently imports some 20% of its energy needs....

...There was cruelty in Mitt Romney's campaign modus operandi. He seemed to welcome, and enjoy, disparaging comments about President Obama. He did nothing to discourage the all-too-frequent birther remarks, and he even referred to this disgusting non-issue on at least one occasion himself.

Yes, I believe Mitt Romney is a decent man; but I also believe that he ran an indecent campaign...

Contrary to the way it’s often portrayed, the looming prospect of spending cuts and tax increases isn’t a fiscal crisis. It is, instead, a political crisis brought on by the G.O.P.’s attempt to take the economy hostage. And just to be clear, the danger for next year is not that the deficit will be too large but that it will be too small, and hence plunge America back into recession..

Sunday, November 11, 2012

Detroit rocker and right-winger Ted Nugent was not too happy when President Barack Obama was reelected, so he took to Twitter to denounce the "pimps," "whores" and "welfare brats" who voted for America's "economic [and] spiritual suicide..."

"...Four presidents in the last century have won 50 percent of the vote twice: Roosevelt, Eisenhower, Reagan, and Obama," the conservative pundit explained. "It pains me to say that, to put him in with those other three, but it's a fact. Democrats picked up seats in the House and the Senate. The president is in good shape. ... I think there will be a big budget deal. It will be an Obama budget deal much more than a Paul Ryan-type budget deal. Elections have consequences."

He continued: "The leadership in the Republican Party and the leadership in the conservative movement has to pull back, let people float new ideas. Let's have a serious debate. Don't scream and yell when one person says, 'You know what? It won't kill the country if we raise taxes a little bit on millionaires.' It really won't, I don't think..."

...The American weakness that Romney both apotheosized and exploited in achieving this feat—our post-fact syndrome where anyone on the public stage can make up anything and usually get away with it—won’t disappear with him. A slicker liar could have won, and still might...

Christian conservatives, for more than two decades a pivotal force in American politics, are grappling with Election Day results that repudiated their influence and suggested that the cultural tide — especially on gay issues — has shifted against them...

Friday, November 09, 2012

...The America that gave the president a second term and ushered in a string of cultural firsts was formed at a time of dramatic changes that were starting to take root just around the time Obama was born in 1961.

"The '60s culture wars won, and that's a legacy that we're now seeing," said Julian Zelizer, political historian at Princeton University and CNN contributor...

Many many people are grieving for our country today. My Facebook feed, made up mostly of conservative Christians, is like the day after a bomb dropped. Early polls showed 80% of evangelicals voted for Governor Romney, and many are shocked and grieved by the outcome of the election.

Former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice says the Republican Party must adapt better to rapidly changing demographics in the United States, saying the GOP sent “mixed messages” in the election campaign on immigration and women’s issues...

Thursday, November 08, 2012

The Republican candidate failed to get even 40 percent of the vote in New York State and California. The latter is the most remarkable. It was Nixon's and Reagan's home-state. And now their party is essentially based in Mississippi.

This country has truly changed, and I believe there will be no going back. Hate lost yesterday. That is amazing in and of itself. And all the women who were elected last night! A total rebuke of Neanderthal attitudes.

Now the real work begins. Millions of us – the majority – must come together to insist that President Obama and the Democrats stand up and fight for the things we sent them there to do. Mr. President, do not listen to the pundits who today call for you to "compromise." No. You already tried that. It didn't work. You can compromise later if you need to, but please, no more beginning by compromising. And if the Republican House doesn't want to play ball, do a massive end run around them with one executive order after another – just like they have done and will do if given the chance again...

Here's a word that hasn't popped up in the various post-mortems of the election so far: Occupy.

From the start, it's been my opinion that the very least you could say about the movement was that people were yelling at the correct buildings. And, I agree with Todd Gitlin in that the first iteration of the movement pushed things about as far as it possibly could. But its effect on the election just passed could not be more profound, and it should not be ignored — though it likely will be — by the rest of the people trying to make sense of What It All Means. Occupy changed the national dialogue. Willard Romney's surreptitiously taped comments about "the 47 percent" would not have had the resonance they did had the Occupy movement not gotten the country talking about the 99 percent and the one percent. It created a new rhetorical paradigm that simply would not have been there had it not been originally shouted at the correct buildings. And it was that new paradigm that triumphed Tuesday night...

Wednesday, November 07, 2012

California's Democratic Governor Jerry Brown, eager to show quick results from newly passed twin tax hikes he promoted to avoid drastic education cuts, joined state university officials on Wednesday to announce an immediate rollback in tuition rates...

After Tuesday's election, if Republicans are smart, they will realize that the culture war just isn't working out for them any longer. Republicans leaned as heavily as ever on social issues and paid the price at the polls. After decades of rewarding Republicans with votes for their scare-mongering over abortion and homosexuality, voters finally turned to social conservatives and said, "Enough..."

...I am happy to say goodbye to Allen West, happy to see a quick end to Richard Mourdock, happy not to have to think about Todd Akin. I'm happy that the Dems -- almost unimaginably -- gained two seats in the Senate. And while I'm not happy that Obama won, I am overjoyed that mendacious Mitt Romney lost...

The people of Missouri and Indiana were, in effect, given a referendum on "legitimate rape" on election day, and they soundly rejected the concept by defeating U.S. Senate candidates Todd Akin and Richard Mourdock. The two legislators had stirred controversy over their verbal attempts to characterize the validity of a rape victim's experience in order to push forward their anti-abortion agendas.

The extremists lost badly, while a historic number of women swept into the U.S. Senate, turning the tide in the "war on women." The Obama campaign's heavy focus on women's issues for the past year appears to have paid off with CNN reporting an 18-point gender gap nationally this election, more than his 12-point gender gap in 2008...

Last week, the Gallup Organization provided more fodder for the debate over whether this year’s polls are skewed due to a systematic over-representation of Democrats in the samples. If Gallup has it right, Governor Romney’s lead may be several percentage points greater than the most recent round of polls suggests...

Tuesday, November 06, 2012

So, I voted. I don’t remember the exact day, but it was sometime in early October. California allows residents to sign up for permanent vote-by-mail. They get their ballot a month in advance and can then mail it back in. You can vote with all the materials in front of you, you don’t have to wait in line, you can mull over your vote for a while and hold your mail-in ballot until the final weekend if you want, or even the final day (you can turn it in to any polling place). And it works extremely well. So well, in fact, that the majority of California citizens will vote this way in 2012, as they did in past elections.

In Washington and Oregon, all voting is 100% by mail. There are collection boxes around the state for the procrastinators. It doesn’t require new technologies or expensive voting machines. Just the architecture that’s been in existence across the country since the Pony Express...

...Among 12 national polls published on Monday, Mr. Obama led by an average of 1.6 percentage points. Perhaps more important is the trend in the surveys. On average, Mr. Obama gained 1.5 percentage points from the prior edition of the same polls, improving his standing in nine of the surveys while losing ground in just one...

...A president who has taken a lot of abuse from Republicans — one refusing to take his urgent calls on the debt deal, one yelling “You lie!” during an address on the Affordable Care Act, many libeling his religion, race and nationality, all plotting to upend his plans — was finally getting a little G.O.P. love.

It was a jarring sign to Republicans that, despite Romney’s humanlike performance in recent weeks, there is no deep tie, nor real respect, among many of those helping with his campaign, even men considered as running mates. Romney is idolized by his wife and sons, and in his close Mormon circle of friends, but beyond that, there is an intensity vacuum...

Monday, November 05, 2012

...It turns out that, according to intelligence officials, CIA agents stationed in Benghazi actually did come to the aid of the Consulate, as did a second CIA team sent from Tripoli, and Libyan military forces helped the surviving Americans get to the airport to escape after the attack. The officials also directly refuted Fox News’ claims that the CIA was ordered to “stand down,” and also dismissed the notion that airstrikes could have helped anyone in the consulate:...

A strategist for Sen. John McCain’s 2008 presidential campaign said on Monday morning that voter fraud was virtually nonexistent in the U.S. and yet has somehow become part of the Republican “mythology.”

“I think that all of this stuff that has transpired over the last two years is in search of a solution to a problem, voting fraud, that doesn’t really exist when you look deeply at the question,” strategist Steve Schmidt said on MSNBC...

FOUR years ago, The Economist endorsed Barack Obama for the White House with enthusiasm. So did millions of voters. Next week Americans will trudge to the polls far less hopefully. So (in spirit at least) will this London-based newspaper. Having endured a miserably negative campaign, the world’s most powerful country now has a much more difficult decision to make than it faced four years ago...

Sunday, November 04, 2012

Uncertainty. The rules of quantum campaigning dictate that no human being can ever simultaneously know both what Mitt Romney’s lead in the polls is and what that lead will be at some future date. This is known as the “poll uncertainty principle.”

Hundreds of protesters marched Saturday in Portland, Oregon to protest the premise of drastic cuts to crucial aspects of the federal budget, resulting in a small skirmish in which police used pepper spray to disperse marchers...

A judge extended early voting hours in one Florida county on Sunday after the state Democratic Party sued in an effort to give people more time at the polls.

Some voters had faced waits several hours long on Saturday, the last scheduled day of early voting. The judge ruled on a lawsuit filed late Saturday in Orange County after an early voting site was shut down for several hours. The Winter Park library was evacuated when a suspicious package — a cooler — was found outside. It was later detonated by a local bomb squad...

Saturday, November 03, 2012

...The rationalization and extension of the current market is financed by the other linchpin of the law: the mandate that we all carry health insurance, an idea forged not by liberal social engineers at the Brookings Institution but by conservative economists at the Heritage Foundation. The individual mandate recognizes that millions of Americans who could buy health insurance choose not to, because it requires trading away today’s wants for tomorrow’s needs. The mandate is about personal responsibility — a hallmark of conservative thought.

IN the partisan war sparked by the 2008 election, Republicans conveniently forgot that this was something many of them had supported for years. The only thing wrong with the mandate? Mr. Obama also thought it was a good idea.

The same goes for health insurance exchanges, another idea formulated by conservatives and supported by Republican governors and legislators across the country for years. An exchange is as pro-market a mechanism as they come: free up buyers and sellers, standardize the products, add pricing transparency, and watch what happens. Market Economics 101...

This is a long, thorough article classifying the various creeps, liars, and sociopaths infesting the upper rungs of the economic ladder. It is well worth reading, especially if you're feeling the need for a sorta academic fix.

...Bar Patron 1 credits his job entirely to his own talent. Notice that he does not deny the plain fact that society has just bailed out the whole industry, saving many “smart” people from together wrecking the whole system. What he claims is that this plain fact is nevertheless wholly irrelevant to what bankers are due. The feeling seems to be widely shared in the industry. Bankers feel very sure of their entitlement to enormous benefits, and therefore feel mystified and even victimized by the suggestion that they are overpaid. Indeed, in interviews with bankers about the Occupy Wall Street protesters, bankers privately say that their critics lack an appropriate sense of gratitude...

Friday, November 02, 2012

If President Obama is re-elected, health care coverage will expand dramatically, taxes on the wealthy will go up and Wall Street will face tougher regulation. If Mitt Romney wins instead, health coverage will shrink substantially, taxes on the wealthy will fall to levels not seen in 80 years and financial regulation will be rolled back...

Now that Chris Christie has dared to show what used to be the standard amount of deference and respect due to the office of the president, the right wing has pounced on him like Rush Limbaugh on a Dominican hooker. The latest complaint is that he is not allowing oil companies to take advantage of New Jersey’s misfortune and charge whatever they want in storm-stricken neighborhoods filled with desperate people. There are long lines, you see, ever so long lines of people waiting for gasoline, and Chris Christie could fix these long lines if he just let gas stations charge, say, $20 per gallon. Why is Chris Christie a mean man that hates price gouging and by extension, capitalism?...

If President Obama is re-elected, health care coverage will expand dramatically, taxes on the wealthy will go up and Wall Street will face tougher regulation. If Mitt Romney wins instead, health coverage will shrink substantially, taxes on the wealthy will fall to levels not seen in 80 years and financial regulation will be rolled back...

Older voters will remember Richard Nixon’s secret (and phony) plan to end the Vietnam War in the 1968 campaign. Now, Mitt Romney is trying the same thing with his budget plan. He won’t disclose details, with his advisers arguing that doing so would hurt his campaign. Yes, it would. Because Romney’s budget goals are mathematically impossible to achieve. In reality, he would cause middle income Americans to pay higher taxes, budget deficits to skyrocket, or both. That’s a toxic combination, and voters shouldn’t buy this secret plan for a minute...

As previously reported in by the Columbus Free Press, the Romney family, namely Mitt, Ann, G Scott and Tagg Romney, along with Mitt’s “6th son” and campaign finance chair have a secretive private equity firm called Solamere Capital Partners. This firms ties to Romney’s campaign and bundlers is already well documented, along with its connection to the manufacture and distribution of voting machines. What is not as well documented is a subsidiary of that private equity firm hiring employees of a failed firm tied to a Ponzi scheme that has a long history of money laundering for Latin American drug cartels and to the Iran-Contra scandal...

Thursday, November 01, 2012

A U.K. appeals court on Thursday ordered Apple Inc. AAPL +0.06% to be more sincere.

The Cupertino-based company reluctantly issued a statement on its U.K. website last week acknowledging that Samsung didn’t crib the iPad tablet design, despite Apple’s claims to the contrary. A U.K. judge had ordered the statement, in one of many legal disputes between the two tech giants over pretty much everything...

Even here, in the remote reaches of the known Universe, the Evil Eye of Corrupt Money has gazed upon our local state senate race. I received an email from the John Snow (D) fund raising committee which pointed out the profound unfairness that unlimited money can bring to a democracy. Following is an excerpt (my bold):

In the course of political campaigns, candidates are expected to
extol their individual merits and even highlight their opponent’s
limitations. Jim Davis (R), in his campaign against John Snow (D), has flooded
voters in the seven most western counties with negative campaign mailers
and TV commercials, and in the process he offered little substance. To
fuel such an aggressive campaign has taken money – lots of it. Davis
has received a total of $732,363 with only 2.4% of it coming from
sources within the 50th NC Senate District...

...In this emergency when we don’t know what’s going on or whether to boil our water or not or where we can get cheap firewood, the idea that AT&T is still putting artificial limits on the data plans is outrageous. Not only that but from what I heard in WNYC last night, back in 2008 after another cellular network failure in the aftermath of a catastrophe, there was a bill pending in Congress that would have mandated that the cell towers have an 8 hour back up generator plan and the telecoms killed that bill. Yep, they killed it. This is when many people such as myself have ,given up our landlines so the only way we can call first responders after and emergency is by using our cell phones and the immoral bastards killed the bill with their army of lobbyists...

Rep. Steve King (R-IA) says that the East Coast can get federal aid to deal with the devastation from Superstorm Sandy — but they’ll have to draw up a detailed plan first to prevent it from being wasted on things like Gucci bags and massage parlors...